Difficult to qualify or quantify what “intuition of practitioners” means. In my 14 years as a classroom teacher I saw how classroom practice is largely an evidence free zone and how desperately colleagues clung to ” best practice” or simply their practice which, naturally was the best, or if not, the easiest thing to do and hey, everyone does this anyway.

Along with this, I often saw aggressive anti-theory attitudes, culturally conditioned by tradional American anti-intellectualism.

That aside, teachers need training in research methods and particularly in action research. They need to understand how to read research critically and to contribute to this dialog. This is one way in which the current gap between research and practice can be bridged. And those who prefer “intuition” can be safely left to that.